Chapter Twenty
A s Lark approached Lady Melforth’s door, a carriage pulled away from the curb. His gaze narrowed to Viv slumped on the front steps in the morning light, her head bowed, a brown paper package clutched to her chest, her blue skirts trailing against the stones. The first time he’d seen her he’d thought a piece of the sky had fallen to the ground. Now his heart lurched. She had fallen somehow. He hurried his steps.
The house looked as it always did with its neat stone exterior and iron railing, its windows glinting in the sun. He glanced at the door knocker, but no black cloth shrouded it to explain her dejected state. Her gloves, bonnet, and shawl proclaimed that she had been out on some errand or was about to begin one. He stopped, facing her. “Viv? Why are you sitting out here?”
She looked up, blinking against the light. He moved to shield her face from the glare and caught his breath at the expression of blank wretchedness in her eyes. “The Strydes are here. I saw them enter.”
So, she had been out. He knew she avoided the Strydes when she could, but usually they brought out the fight in her. Their presence did not explain her downcast state. “May I?” he asked .
She seemed not to understand him. Carefully, he brushed her skirts aside and joined her, setting his hat on the stones. He wasn’t sure she noticed that he sat beside her. “Can you tell me what’s wrong besides the Strydes?”
Carriages and vans rattled by on Henrietta Street, casting moving shadows over them as they sat. A passing gentleman and the lady on his arm gave them a quick puzzled glance. Lark waited. The morning’s brightness exposed an odd contrast between the shine of his boots and the bedraggled hem of her gown. At last, she spoke.
“Where have you been these past days?” She sounded mildly curious, as if his absence had been a matter of little importance.
“Did you think I’d forgotten you? The duke—”
She twisted, putting a gloved hand to his lips, shaking her head sadly. The brown package slid off her lap down her sprawling skirts. “Don’t,” she said. “The duke is not your employer, is he? And you do not manage his book collection, do you?”
He met her gaze as steadily as he could.
She took her hand away.
“I never lied about knowing him. He saw to my education.”
She gave him a sad, searching look that made his heart shrink. He wanted to protest that it hadn’t all been lies. His feelings had not been a lie. But as he tried to think of more truths he could tell her, his thoughts scattered. “I do not depend on him for…my…income. I bank with Hammersley’s, as I told you.” He tapped the package beside her with his forefinger. “Is this making you sad? ”
She pushed the package off her skirts onto the stone step. “The proofs from Dodsley.”
“You’re disappointed.” He knew he was stating the obvious, and the word was far too mild for whatever devastating blow had fallen. Something had knocked the bright spirits out of her. He stole a glance at the package of proofs. The explanation must lie in them. “Did Dodsley change the title, or worse?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She began to tug off her left glove. “It’s good that you are here. We have come to the end of our arrangement, have we not?”
He watched her pull at the glove. It snagged a little on his garnet ring, but she tugged again to free her hand. He took her hand in his, hers, icy cold, the ring loose on her finger. She was going to end their betrothal, while he had come to ask her to continue a few more days, at least until he knew the whole truth. He already knew that his mother had not had the pox, nor had she lived by selling the use of her body.
He rubbed Viv’s hand between his own warmer hands. If he could delay this talk of ending their betrothal, he could get to the bottom of what had happened to bring her so low. “Can you tell me what has caused your distress? Is there anything I can do? Shall we go to Dodsley?”
“I’ve just come from Dodsley. He isn’t the problem.” Her hand lay lifeless and cold in his. Her gaze was remote as if her thoughts were far away. Then she turned and looked at him with such piercing directness, his heart hurt. “I want no more deceptions,” she said.
He swallowed. It was too soon to undeceive her. He needed more time. Even a day or two could make all the difference. His mind raced through what he already knew, what he could possibly say. His mother had a history, though she did not yet have a name.
Wenlocke had been the key. With the duke’s backing, the hospital had allowed Lark to question the oldest serving members of the staff. An ancient nurse remembered the night arrival of a woman so dosed with laudanum the doctor feared she might not revive. When prompted to explain a matching record that Finch found, the matron acknowledged that the woman must have been admitted mistakenly. The matron insisted that the hospital bore no blame because the woman had been troubled with delusions of a husband and a son though her record said otherwise. She had been sent to a private hospital in Surrey. Meanwhile, Robin had discovered that Sneath was well known to the authorities for various frauds. Fury and guilt plagued Lark with each discovery, and each maddening delay now that he was so close to finding the truth.
He roused himself from his thoughts. Viv was in distress. He must help her first. A large shadow fell on them both and didn’t move. Lark looked up.
Rook stood on the flagstones in front of the house, his stance wide and challenging, his fists clenched, his bearded face screwed tight in anger.
“Tell ’er the truth. Tell ’er ’oo you are, or I will.” His voice boomed out.
Viv’s hand slipped from Lark’s, and she turned a faltering gaze from him to Rook. “You followed us in the park that day. ”
“Tell ’er,” Rook said, ignoring Viv, his stare fixed on Lark.
“She knows who I am,” he said. Lark readied himself to push Rook back away from her.
“Hah! She thinks yer a toff that dresses swell and talks fine. Yer liars, the pair of you.” Beside Lark, Viv shuddered.
Rook dipped a big hand into the pocket of his worn brown coat and pulled out a scrap of blue velvet, crushed and dirt-smudged. “See this!” He took a heavy step forward and dangled the little blue purse by its strings, thrusting it at Viv’s face. “Yer nothin’ but a cheat. Ye think yer that clever stuffing it with stones.”
Lark sprang from the step and gave Rook a quick shove that rocked him back on his heels. Rook staggered, grabbing hold of the iron point of a railing to catch himself.
“Say what you came to say. Your quarrel is with me, not her.” Lark positioned himself between Rook and Viv and glanced to see that she was unharmed. Her gaze was fixed on Rook with a look of dawning comprehension in her eyes. “You took my purse that day in Babylon Street.”
Rook shook his head and offered her an evil grin. “We did.” He let go of the railing and pointed to Lark. “We’re partners. Rook and Lark.”
Viv flinched as if he’d struck her, but that didn’t stop Rook.
“Lark, ’e spots the marks. I do the clicks. Then Lark makes ’em forget they ever saw me.”
Viv’s gaze shifted back to Lark, alert now, accusing. She came slowly to her feet. “So that’s how it’s done. It’s distraction, isn’t it? That day you were distracting me, not helping me. You were protecting him, your partner, letting him get away. You let me think…”
Her eyes, those deep brown eyes of hers, were wells of pain. She said no deception. He offered none. “You wanted to meet a pickpocket. Now you have.”
“You let me believe… Was it all lies then?” Her voice sank to a low whisper. Her face was drawn and colorless in the chocolate depths of her bonnet. She didn’t wait for an answer. She tugged the ring from her finger and held it out to him.
Everything inside him protested, but he opened his hand and she dropped the ring into his palm. For an instant he simply looked at the red gleam of it in his hand. Then he closed his fist and dropped the ring in his pocket. They were back at the beginning. The mad spell of being Edward Larkin was at an end. His past had claimed him.
Rook clapped Lark on the back and slung an arm around his shoulder. “Yer free, man. Ye can come ’ome now. You and me. It’ll be like it was.”
He shook off Rook’s hold. “No. I told you I wouldn’t go back.” Viv might not have him, but he had one more thing he could do for her, a thing only a thief could do. He bent down to sweep his hat up from the stones, turned, and strode off.
*
Viv stood stunned. The bearlike man shouted, “Laaaark!” His cry, like the wail of a wounded beast, was swallowed up in the noise of Henrietta Street, but it rang in Viv’s ears, reverberating hollowly inside her.
His name was Rook, and they had been pickpockets together. Rook turned on her with his frown-creased brow and his face full of baffled pain.
“It’s yer bleeding doing. Ye spoilt it all,” he cried. He advanced toward her, but she lifted her chin and stood her ground. She didn’t have her pistol, but in the house, they would hear him shouting. Any minute the door would open. He halted in front of her, an imperfect mirror in which to read the truth. She, too, loved Lark.
“’e was my partner. ’e was my friend.” Rook pounded his chest with one beefy fist. “’e doesn’t belong with the likes of ye.”
“You are better off without him.” She meant it.
“Ye twisted ’im. Ye made ’im think ’e was a toff. He was a thief like me.”
She shook her head, denying it. He was a thief, but not like Rook, nothing like Rook. Lark had been Edward Larkin from the moment he spoke to her on Babylon Street. He had not belonged to her or to the wounded bear in front of her. The door opened behind her.
“Miss?” Haxton cried. He held a poker in one hand and shook it at Rook. “You,” he shouted. “Be off now, or I’ll have you taken up.”
Rook shouted one last invective, threw the soiled velvet bag at Viv’s feet, and ran.
Viv picked up her ruined bag, and turned to gather up the proofs. But the steps were empty. The proofs were gone.